Getting started - Library
Installation
Pip
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install playwright
playwright install
Conda
conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --add channels microsoft
conda install playwright
playwright install
These commands download the Playwright package and install browser binaries for Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. To modify this behavior see installation parameters.
Usage
Once installed, you can import
Playwright in a Python script, and launch any of the 3 browsers (chromium
, firefox
and webkit
).
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.chromium.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto("http://playwright.dev")
print(page.title())
browser.close()
Playwright supports two variations of the API: synchronous and asynchronous. If your modern project uses asyncio, you should use async API:
import asyncio
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright
async def main():
async with async_playwright() as p:
browser = await p.chromium.launch()
page = await browser.new_page()
await page.goto("http://playwright.dev")
print(await page.title())
await browser.close()
asyncio.run(main())
First script
In our first script, we will navigate to https://playwright.dev/
and take a screenshot in WebKit.
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.webkit.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto("https://playwright.dev/")
page.screenshot(path="example.png")
browser.close()
By default, Playwright runs the browsers in headless mode. To see the browser UI, pass the headless=False
flag while launching the browser. You can also use slow_mo
to slow down execution. Learn more in the debugging tools section.
firefox.launch(headless=False, slow_mo=50)
Interactive mode (REPL)
You can launch the interactive python REPL:
python
and then launch Playwright within it for quick experimentation:
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
playwright = sync_playwright().start()
# Use playwright.chromium, playwright.firefox or playwright.webkit
# Pass headless=False to launch() to see the browser UI
browser = playwright.chromium.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto("https://playwright.dev/")
page.screenshot(path="example.png")
browser.close()
playwright.stop()
Async REPL such as asyncio
REPL:
python -m asyncio
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright
playwright = await async_playwright().start()
browser = await playwright.chromium.launch()
page = await browser.new_page()
await page.goto("https://playwright.dev/")
await page.screenshot(path="example.png")
await browser.close()
await playwright.stop()
Pyinstaller
You can use Playwright with Pyinstaller to create standalone executables.
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
with sync_playwright() as p:
browser = p.chromium.launch()
page = browser.new_page()
page.goto("https://playwright.dev/")
page.screenshot(path="example.png")
browser.close()
If you want to bundle browsers with the executables:
- Bash
- PowerShell
- Batch
PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0 playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py
$env:PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH="0"
playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py
set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0
playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py
Bundling the browsers with the executables will generate bigger binaries. It is recommended to only bundle the browsers you use.
Known issues
time.sleep()
leads to outdated state
Most likely you don't need to wait manually, since Playwright has auto-waiting. If you still rely on it, you should use page.wait_for_timeout(5000)
instead of time.sleep(5)
and it is better to not wait for a timeout at all, but sometimes it is useful for debugging. In these cases, use our wait (wait_for_timeout
) method instead of the time
module. This is because we internally rely on asynchronous operations and when using time.sleep(5)
they can't get processed correctly.
incompatible with SelectorEventLoop
of asyncio
on Windows
Playwright runs the driver in a subprocess, so it requires ProactorEventLoop
of asyncio
on Windows because SelectorEventLoop
does not supports async subprocesses.
On Windows Python 3.7, Playwright sets the default event loop to ProactorEventLoop
as it is default on Python 3.8+.
Threading
Playwright's API is not thread-safe. If you are using Playwright in a multi-threaded environment, you should create a playwright instance per thread. See threading issue for more details.